


Anticipate

by f_femslash



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 11:00:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4017271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f_femslash/pseuds/f_femslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-graduation, established relationship AU in which Beca and Chloe pursue their careers and share an apartment in New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anticipate

**Author's Note:**

> Chloe's storyline/this fic is inspired by Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, so if you're familiar with that you might notice some similarities. Otherwise it probably doesn't matter.

_"You are subtle as a window pane, standing in my view._

_But I will wait for it to rain, so that I can see you._

_You call me up at night when there's no light passing through,_

_and you think that I don't understand, but I do."_

_-_ Ani Difranco, "Anticipate" _  
_

 

It’s not how Chloe imagined it would be.

 

Some parts are good, great, even. New York is magic, she thinks, sometimes turning ordinary moments into perfect memories and sometimes feeling so out of control that she’s sure she’ll never get a handle on it.

 

She’s up every morning at six, and at the gym while she’s still rubbing sleep from her eyes. And then she’s standing in line outside of rehearsal spaces in midtown if she’s lucky, or scary, crappy neighborhoods in Brooklyn if she’s not. And there are hundreds of girls, and they all look exactly like her, and they can all sing above a G sharp, she just knows it.

 

And she walks into the audition room on shaky legs, and the table of men, sometimes women, but usually men, don’t even bother to look up. She hands her music over to the accompanist, she goes over the tempo with him, she walks to the middle of the room and introduces herself. The number pinned to her dress crinkles when she moves.

 

Maybe now one of the men will glance up as an assistant passes around her headshot and resume - those glossy headshots she has to save up for to pay for the photographer and the printing, and God only knows what happens to them when she leaves the room. They end up in one pile or another, but never the right one.

 

And then she has sixteen bars, sixteen measures, to pull them in. Sixteen bars to make them realize she’s better than all the other hundreds of girls they’ll see today. And then it’s over, and she’s done, and she walks out, and she never hears from any of them.

 

Or she does, and then her heart is in her throat for days, and she goes back for a dance call or for a cold read with two pages of script taken out of context, which she memorizes in the waiting room and then auditions against an assistant reading dryly from a page. But that’s it, she never hears again after that.

 

And then she runs from the crappy, scary neighborhood in Brooklyn or the Bronx to the Upper East Side, to stand in a line with all the other nannies waiting for their charges to emerge from Dalton or whatever pretentious private school to escort them home and do their homework for them and make sure they don’t kill each other until their parents waltz in an hour after she’s scheduled to leave and ask her to do some mundane thing before she goes like sanitize the toys in the playroom.

 

But she finally does leave, and she goes home to her apartment in Astoria above the Greek restaurant - _their_ apartment.

 

This is the part that is good, and great, and it’s the part that is exactly like Chloe expected it to be. Because usually she’s already waiting for her with Thai food, or she stumbles in a few minutes after Chloe gets home. And it’s just them in their tiny studio apartment where they could probably cook breakfast without getting out of bed, but it’s theirs. And they climb into that bed and let their legs get tangled up under the blankets, and Beca plays her newest mix on her laptop and Chloe tells her stories about her day that make her laugh.

 

And then they’re kissing, and touching, and it’s better than Chloe imagined because Beca’s skin is so soft against hers, and sometimes she’s so gentle she’s hardly touching her, and sometimes she’s so rough and commanding that Chloe can hardly catch her breath, stretching up into her for more, to be closer, to beg for more of her.

 

Afterwards, when they are still lying tangled in the bedsheets and Beca’s laptop has moved on through her playlist to something quieter and their hands are clasped between them and they are simply lying face to face in their bed that they share, then Beca will start to talk, softly, not always meeting Chloe’s gaze.

 

Chloe will stroke the back of her hand with the pad of her thumb, but she stays quiet while Beca tells her about the overbearing producer at the recording studio where she’s an intern. She’ll tell her about the artist who demanded fresh coffee every hour, about the customer at her coffee shop day job who screamed at her for five full minutes until her manager finally intervened. She tells her that she’s scared she’s not good enough, and never will be, that her dad was right, that she’ll have to go back to him and tell him so.

 

“You won’t,” Chloe says, and presses her lips where her thumb has been rubbing circles on the back of Beca’s hand, “You’ll never have to do that.”

 

“Are you adding clairvoyance to the list of special skills on your resume now?” Beca tries to smirk, and then tries to discreetly wipe the tear that escapes the corner of her eye by turning her face into her pillow.

 

“No. Hey, come back,” she disentangles their fingers and runs a hand through Beca’s hair until she stops hiding her face. More tears have escaped now, and she turns her gaze to the ceiling in an attempt to keep them at bay.

 

“Look at me, Becs,” Chloe waits until she does, pushes Beca’s hair out of her face. “You are amazing, and you want this so badly. I know you’ll do it. I’ve never met anyone as talented or as driven as you are.”

 

Beca shakes her head, and breaks eye contact again, grabbing Chloe’s hand and lacing their fingers together once more, staring at their joined hands.

 

“When I have a bad audition, or I’m ready to give up because I got puked on by another kid whose weekly allowance is more than our rent, I look at you, I think about you…” Chloe feels tears start at her own eyes and wills them away. Beca takes care of her, and she knows it. But here, in the dark, in their bed, when Beca’s vulnerabilities shine through the way they don’t in the daylight, Chloe wants to be the one to take care of her. “I think about what you would do. And everything you’ve already done, to get what you want. And I know I can’t give up on any of it.”

 

Beca sniffs, and finally meets Chloe’s gaze again. “I love you.”

 

It’s not the first time she’s said it, but she doesn’t say it often enough that the three words don’t send Chloe’s heart fluttering helplessly in her chest. “I love you, too,” escapes her in breathy tones barely above a whisper.

 

And then Beca’s normal smirk slowly returns, and they kiss some more. And maybe Beca will slide under the covers and Chloe will see her own underwear emerge from under the blankets and drop to the floor, and after that her eyes will close while Beca’s mouth is on her.

 

After a few minutes Beca will kick the blankets off of them both so she can look up at Chloe, who opens her eyes in time to see that smirk before her mouth is on her again and then her eyes are closing again because she’s so close and her legs are starting to shake and then Beca’s mouth is gone and she’s saying, “Open your eyes, look at me,” in a voice that’s so low Chloe shivers and obeys.

 

Their eyes meet over the length of Chloe’s torso, and then Beca starts again at a quick rhythm that brings Chloe right to where they left off and then she’s coming hard against Beca’s tongue and Beca’s gaze is unfaltering, her eyes so dark they look limitless.

 

They unintentionally fall asleep naked more often than either of them care to admit. And the next day it’s back to the auditions and the coffee shop and the big city trying to swallow them whole, both of them knowing that their bed and the dark, quiet place they share will be waiting for them when they get home.

 

 


End file.
